Amazon has, apparently, ponied up for a speech recognition company called Yap, the Atlantic reports.

Yap was an iPhone and Android app voicemail transcription service that would turn your audio voicemails into text, somewhat similar to Google Voice. It had generally positive reviews. It was purchased by a mysterious suitor in September, which CLT Blog traced back to Amazon's address. On October 20, it shut down.

The question, of course, is what will Amazon do with it. Is this headed to mobile? Is it a Siri competitor? Android, the OS underpinning the Kindle Fire, already has voice control. And of course the Kindle Fire doesn't have a microphone. Is it planning to use it on the Web as well as (or instead of) mobile? Could it be bringing voice recognition to its product search?

Whatever the plans are, it's unlikely to simply let it die on the vine.